In this study, 105 coronary patients have undergone evaluations which include exercise stress testing, 24 hour dietary recall, fasting lipid profiles, insulin and glucose levels and dual x-ray absorptiometry. Of these, 71 have returned for repeat testing after 3 months of cardiac rehabilitation exercise training. The primary study hypothesis is that training-induced changes in body composition and body fat distribution will predict favorable changes in several cardiac risk factors including serum triglycerides, HDL-cholesterol, glucose and insulin levels. Our initial analysis focused on body composition and body fat distribution in older female coronary patients. We found that waist to hip ratio (WHR) was significantly correlated with serum triglycerides (r=0.65, P=0.002), HDL-chol (r=0.46, P=0.05) and fasting insulin levels (r=0.76, P<0.001). Peak oxygen consumption was the best predictor of LDL-chol (r=0.73, P<0.01). We wll soon be supplementing this analysis wth data on response of these variables to exercise conditioning. We expect that these data will focus attention of the importance of WHR as an outcome variable in the rehabilitation of coronary patients.